We’ve just returned from PDAC and lithium is all the rage. The specialty chemical’s parabolic price spike has altered the landscape and as I predicted late last year, a crop of juniors has flocked to the space. While this is dangerous and may serve to confuse investors, it doesn’t negate the fact that the lithium demand story is real.

Given the supply tightness, elevated prices for lithium concentrate, lithium carbonate, and lithium hydroxide are going to remain a fact of life for perhaps the next 18 months. The recent binding off-take agreement Galaxy Resources (GXY:ASX) signed for 60,000 tonnes of lithium concentrate at US $600/t (FOB) with 50% of the total order value paid up front in cash ($18 million) is only the latest exciting example of a lithium market taking shape.

All of this brings us back, however, to a question we’ve discussed publicly: as the lithium mining space continues to evolve, how do you play lithium outside of investing in the miners?

Here is the link for my recent remarks at PDAC regarding how to interpret the lithium market. The presentation is "picture heavy" as I generally hate powerpoint and minimize words in favor of images.

Nonetheless, reach out to me if you'd like a deeper discussion on these issues.

The presentation looks at the reasons why the lithium ion battery is increasingly important in our daily lives and offers a few thoughts on what to look for and avoid as you start to understand an increasingly interesting and pivotal space.

After a tumultuous few years unleashed by geopolitical rivalries in Asia, the rare earth sector has mean reverted with rare earth element (REE) prices having fallen by as much as 90% from their peak in 2011.

It is interesting to note that the core issue which drove exponential gains in rare earth prices – supply chain dependence on China – is still a reality.

In the wake of Molycorp’s (MCPIQ:OTCBB) spectacular implosion and bankruptcy and the financial struggles of Lynas (LYC:ASX), many are questioning whether or not a REE supply chain outside of China is even feasible.

While the collapse in REE prices has rendered most non-Chinese deposits uneconomic, a weaker local currency coupled with government support may be enough to begin to establish a reliable source of saleable REE products outside of an increasingly unstable China.

It is widely acknowledged that credit is the lifeblood of an economy. It provides the leverage for growth. The interest rate assigned to a fixed income security can then be thought of as the “cost” or “price” of the credit.

This makes sense as lenders want to ensure their assets (cash, typically) earn a return above the risk free rate. To be clear, there is much more to determining an interest rate, but this is the basic premise.

What happens, though, when that rate goes negative?

This note is a primer on negative interest rates, a phenomenon not unheard of, but increasingly en vogue in the wake of the Bank of Japan’s surprising (or maybe not so surprising) announcement to set the interest rate they charge commercial banks to deposit money at the BoJ at -0.1%.

If recent mainstream media, sell side, and newsletter writer coverage wasn’t enough to convince you, it is all but obvious that lithium has emerged as an investible asset class for 2016 and beyond as the broader commodity sector continues to struggle with overcapacity and slack demand. While the excitement is born of strong growth in technologies requiring lithium (mainly electric vehicles and energy storage), the real reason for investor excitement boils down to one issue: price.

As The Economist shows, the lithium carbonate spot price has gone parabolic.

If anything is clear after the start of 2016, the global economic rebalancing that central banks around the world are trying to engineer is not proceeding according to plan. The circuit breaker fiasco in the Chinese equity markets is the latest example giving investors pause with respect to what is truly “going on” in China. The Shanghai composite equity index has lost almost 15% of its value YTD and few see good reason for this slide to halt aside from intense government support and RMB devaluation. Money continues to flow out of China as we speak.

As is the case this time of year, we start to close the books on 2015 and position for 2016. While we have effectively and indefinitely moved “to the sidelines” with respect to stock picking in the junior mining space, there were some notable successes, in particular with the merger between Western Lithium (WLC:TSXV) and Lithium Americas. This combination positions the new company in a unique strategic light as electrification, underpinned by the lithium ion battery, gathers steam in 2016. Galaxy Lithium’s (GXY:ASX) restructuring is another positive development. We’ll be watching the developments with these two companies closely.

In 2015, there was very little to be cheerful about in the metals markets and to be blunt, we expect this malaise to continue into 2016. China’s RMB devaluation last summer...

In the Autumn of 2011, my father and I were approached to present to a group of faculty and undergraduate environmental studies majors at a major university here on the East Coast of the United States. The topic was rare earths. What struck me was the fact that nobody was taking notes using a pen and paper – each student was typing away on his or her Mac or PC. While the presentation went well, we were astonished at the lack of knowledge the students had regarding the global supply chain risks inherent in many of the metals and minerals used in the technology that we take for granted. Were the students aware that the cobalt in their computer was quite likely not ethically sourced? This generated several questions. Would they be willing to pay more for a product if they could be sure people weren’t being exploited along the entire supply chain? What about the fact that many of these metals and minerals are critical for national defense and China (a strategic adversary) essentially controls the bulk of production of many of them? There were no easy answers to these questions then and there are none today. But the general ignorance of the supply chain dynamics and the strategic and tactical threats have likely increased despite a horribly depressed metals market.

Ed. Note: The following remarks were those I made to investor audiences during a recent bus tour in Munich, Geneva, Zurich, and Frankfurt.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming today and investing your most valuable asset in us, which is of course, your time. Speaking of time, what I’d like to do today is take a look back and a look forward and briefly offer some thoughts on where we’ve been in the global economy in the past year and what some of the key questions are in 2016 likely to drive the commodity and broader markets altogether.

Rather than make excuses or guesses as to why commodities continue to under perform, I’d like to examine some of our thoughts from a year ago when we were last here in Europe and see what has transpired.

Our Thinking and What We Do

We provide bespoke research and advisory services to institutions on how disruption in commodities, geopolitics, and macroeconomics converge to create opportunities. We're primarily focused on Energy Metals - any metal or mineral used in the generation or storage of energy. As the quality of life between East and West slowly merges due to advances in technology, continued urbanization and changing demographics, opportunities across numerous industries will arise which we aim to point out and debate.

Throughout history, no society has sustained a higher quality of life without access to cheap commodities or materials. As global population increases, putting stresses on resource supply chains, efficiency and technology must come to the fore to continue to provide for a higher quality of life. The looming convergence of lifestyles between the emerging world and the developed world is a thesis we must all understand and accept in order to chart a sustainable path forward for humanity.

The Disruptive Discoveries Journal is a blog aimed at stimulating debate and pointing out opportunities emerging from the ideas discussed above.

We are available for speaking engagements and consulting opportunities.

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